Contact Ben Horowitz for $20

by aaawow • 9 years ago

108 115 9 years ago

paulplug2• 9 years ago

Neat idea. It does seem like a bit of a publicity stunt - I don't think Ben Horowitz really needs the 20 bucks, but this is a cool use case for bitcoin.

huac2• 9 years ago

"Proceeds will be donated to Black Girls Code"

paulplug2• 9 years ago

I missed that. Well still, I don't see this as something he will keep up. I still think it's mostly a temporary publicity stunt.

wfzimmerman2• 9 years ago

Andreessen Horowitz is a major investor in 21.co.

fluxic4• 9 years ago

Arguably better deal: contact me for $2.00 (cbswishes@gmail.com). All proceeds will be used towards buying a new pair of pyjamas

BinaryIdiot• 9 years ago

Hmm. Tell ya what. Contact me for $1.50 and I'll give a portion* of the proceeds to a charity of your choice.

*portion not to exceed 0% of allotted funds

gargarplex2• 9 years ago

I would've gladly sent you $1.50 and asked you to think about growing it via Zidisha if I could find an email address anywhere

gargarplex2• 9 years ago

Payment sent via PayPal. It's a privilege to support our community, so thank you.

AznHisoka• 9 years ago

X 2

fluxic4• 9 years ago

I love you

JadeNB• 9 years ago

All proceeds will be used towards buying a new pair of pyjamas

(Emphasis mine.) It's going to be hard to stick by the terms of that if you get a lot of contacts. :-)

fluxic4• 9 years ago

HAHA! I'm going to get the world's softest, silkiest $4 pyjamas ;)

sanswork3• 9 years ago

21 raises $120 million. Releases a raspberry pi and a bad fiverr clone.

ctvo• 9 years ago

It was 5 dollars when he announced it on Twitter. I guess he adjusted it after seeing the response.

bhouston2• 9 years ago

It may could encourage people to contact him more by giving them a form of permission:

To come to our surprising conclusion, Uri ran an experiment: Out of 10 daycare centers across Haifa, they randomly chose six and introduced a small fine for parents who showed up more than 10 minutes late in each of them. In day cares where the fine was introduced, parents immediately started showing up late, with tardiness levels eventually leveling out at about twice the pre-fine level. That is, introducing a fine caused twice as many parents to show up late. What about the remaining four day care centers that remained fine-free? Tardiness didn’t change at all

Source: http://freakonomics.com/2013/10/23/what-makes-people-do-what...

huac2• 9 years ago

Parents can always show up late, not everyone has Ben Horowitz's email. This isn't a question of motivation but rather a question of access.

To the 4 downvotes: what's his email? What's the relevance of the comment I replied to?

treebeard901• 9 years ago

Incentives for behavior modification is always a fascinating area. In this case, the daycare was incentivized to track people being late more closely since they had a financial interest in doing so. I suspect the outcome was somewhere in the middle of more accurate record keeping and introducing the ability for the parents to pay off their guilt.

Swizec• 9 years ago

It also made the behavior socially acceptable. "So many people are late that we introduced a fine"

"Oh phew, it's not just me. Everyone's doing it"

panic• 9 years ago

It presents a choice where there wasn't one before. Without the fine, most people wouldn't even consider choosing to be late. In general, people tend to choose from the options in front of them, so paying attention to the options you provide is very important.

mindingdata• 9 years ago

We've seen this come up a lot recently with Tesla's move to fine drivers who "park" at charging stations. Many see this as actually worsening the problem as people are happier to pay the (relatively small) fine.

stouset• 9 years ago

I'd read both this article as well as the one about Tesla, but it never would have occurred to me to connect the two! So many aspects of behavioral economics seem counterintuitive at first (introducing penalties increases rule-breaking) but are obvious in hindsight (monetary penalties appear to reframe a calculation away from social decision-making toward economic decision-making, which can change the participants' conclusions toward the penalty)!

the_watcher6• 9 years ago

If the problem is people leaving their car there for hours, is a $24/hr fine really that small? Yea, it might increase the number of people who leave their car there for 10 extra minutes, but it seems highly likely to address the real problem, which is low turnover at the Superchargers.

Even then, Tesla can very easily just increase the fine (or do something like a steadily increasing fine) to address this concern. They could also charge additional fees to anyone who leaves their car at a supercharger for too long serially (and my guess is that these are the real problem).

derEitel• 9 years ago

I can recommend the book 'What money can'take buy' by Micheal Sandel. He has many more examples where using a fee actually resulted in an increase in the undesired behaviour.

leesalminen• 9 years ago

Wow, what a great article! I work in the doggy daycare space.

I had assumed this to be true for a long time but never had any evidence showing it to be true.

This is why I love HN!

gonehome• 9 years ago

I think the worst part was that even when the fine was removed the levels did not revert to what they were previously.

Once a monetary penalty takes the place of a social one it is hard to get the social one back.

lkbm• 9 years ago

While I've always loved this anecdote, and it may be true, I seem to recall some flaws being found in this particular study. That said, I can't back up my memory with sources--there are some 1600 citations of "A Fine is a Price", and no stand-out "this has been refuted" reference showing up at a glance. :-/

amlozano• 9 years ago

I'd really like to see this study re-done with multiple fine sizes. My intuition is that monetary repercussion is valued smaller than the social repercussion.

There might even be a optimal fine level to make profit off the tardy parents.

lastofus• 9 years ago

I'm curious what the fine level was relative to the income of the parents, and if the fine was viewed more as a convenience fee than a penalty.

I'm thinking if the fine was raised to a high enough dollar amount, tardiness would again drop off, or at the very least, revenue would increase enough to justify hiring someone to stay late...

toomuchtodo• 9 years ago

I don't think income plays into it. It converts the transaction of one of spending social capital (social mores, trust) to financial capital; social capital, IMHO, is harder to acquire, therefore far more valuable.

Anyways, because you asked:

http://rady.ucsd.edu/faculty/directory/gneezy/pub/docs/fine....

"It is true that a ‘‘large enough’’ fee would eventually reduce the behavior. For instance, many day-care centers in the United States clearly announce a fee for coming late at the start of the year, and this fee is large and proportional to the length of the delay. The resulting penalty is more severe for the average delay than the nonlinear fine we introduced in our study, even after adjusting for difference in prices and incomes in the two countries. Casual observation shows that there are few delays, but we have not examined if the average delay is different from the one in our sample. Comparing the two systems would be an interesting research project."

whack2• 9 years ago

In the experiment you mentioned, the fine is small enough, that it doesn't produce any significant revenues. The goal is to minimize the number of people who show up late.

Imagine if the day-care made the "fine" high enough that they actually want people to show up late. Ie, think credit-card interest rates and late-payment fees. In that case, regardless of whether tardiness goes up-or-down, the daycare would win either way.

Let's compare this to Ben Horowitz' situation. Imagine if it takes him 5 minutes to read and send a cookie-cutter response. That works out to a hourly rate of $240/hour. Even for a VC, that's a pretty damn good hourly rate. If Ben stops getting spammed by people, I think he'd be perfectly happy with that. If he were to get flooded by spammers willing to pay him $500k/year to send cookie-cutter responses, I think he'd be ok with that as well. It's a win-win for him.

bhouston2• 9 years ago

That works out to a hourly rate of $240/hour.

That is a horrible for a VC, especially for one as successful as Ben.

throwaway2016a• 9 years ago

My child's daycare charges $1 a minute for being late. But there is a bit of a grace period. When we are three minutes late they don't even bother to record it.

danso• 9 years ago

Sounds similar to the Catholic concept of "indulgences". Wonder if sinful actions increased considerably after people had a monetary way to avoid hell.

FLGMwt• 9 years ago

It almost certainly does. He started at $5.

tonydiv• 9 years ago

Are any popular Bitcoin apps using their APIs? I don't really see how an API marketplace paid via Bitcoin is better than a credit card bill at the end of the month based on API usage.

joecool1029• 9 years ago

Here's the right person to ask about that: https://21.co/magicaltux/

bnjms• 9 years ago

I don't see how it is not better. Credit Cards require use of credit providers and all the overhead that entails; minimum payments included. Most of the time this does not bite us and it Just Works except for when we try to step outside of the expected transaction model as we do with say Paypal which has known and necessary pros and cons. A proper bitcoin API has the potential to allow for the transactional web everyone was hoping would come to pass back in the day and since it is NOT owned by a single company, the way companies were clamoring to be the mico-payment provider of the web, it just might happen. If we are going to make an HTTP level API it really needs to be based on a technology any new company can start up a service for rather than centralizing it. Not to mention CC somewhat imply a lower bound of $0.01 which is too costly for some transactions.

It would be amazing if I could pay for access to the Wall Street Journal or New Yorker articles without locking in a full sub. There must be thousands of people who would pay a premium price or $0.15 for individual articles but would not go for a full membership. Then journalists could actually charge for content. We HNers would likely pay for longform but not the dreck we collectively complain about. Weakening the cultural pull of clickbait news.

wfzimmerman2• 9 years ago

try Blendle.

ryao• 9 years ago

Am I the only one who read this as Ben Horowitz giving $20 to each person who contacts him?

jacobsenscott• 9 years ago

That's what I thought.

emodendroket2• 9 years ago

I think I'll hold on to my twenty bucks.

josh_carterPDX2• 9 years ago

This is such an incredible way to raise money for a great cause. If you have people trying to access you, why not put something like this together? I love that this is benefiting someone other than Ben. Kudos to him for doing this. Hopefully more follow his example.

metaphorm4• 9 years ago

are you serious? if Horowitz was really committed to the cause he would just personally donate a large amount of money (he has plenty) and not bother engaging in any of the public virtue signaling behaviors.

it seems pretty obvious that he put the "donated to charity" sticker on the form to deflect accusations that he was profiteering from his fame. seems to me more like he was getting too much shit mail and wanted to try an experiment with gating it behind cash so people would put up or shut up.

tptacek3• 9 years ago

Yes. This. Ben Horowitz is petrified that we will perceive the immense revenues he's going to get from $20 Q&A sessions as profiteering, especially considering the paucity of his other business interests. Virtue signaling, indeed!

josh_carterPDX2• 9 years ago

Snide comments aside, this entire response is jaded, accusatory, and presumptuous.

I don't know how much money Ben has nor do I care. I responded, paid the $20, and my message was a simple "Thank you!"

You either choose to see the good or try to tie in your own negative narrative. I choose to assume his intentions were noble and supported the cause.

the_watcher6• 9 years ago

You seem to be presuming that he has not donated a large sum of money to this cause.

the_watcher6• 9 years ago

Related to this, the meta description claims you'll only pay if you get a response.

Trundle• 9 years ago

Pretty sure he signed up because he's a part owner of the cash gate company. If it was important to him to cash gate himself earlier he certainly had the means to implement a crude version of it.

shadykiller• 9 years ago

What's so great about Ben Horowitz to spend 20$ ?

guelo• 9 years ago

He has a giant pile of money to dole out to startups.

B1FF_PSUVM• 9 years ago

Methinks it's the other way around, but whatever.

giarc• 9 years ago

37Signals has been doing something similar (with the charity portion). I heard about it while listening to the new podcast by Noah Kagan. For $500, you can go visit 37Signals for a day and see how they work. Price has been rising every year.

http://okdork.com/2017/01/19/jason-fried-robots-watches-and-...

justinhensley• 9 years ago

My question is, are you guaranteed a response? I viewed this on mobile and that wasn't immediately clear.

chrisper• 9 years ago

No, of course not. It's like a vending machine. You hit the buttons, insert the money, and hope that something comes out of it.

Nexxxeh• 9 years ago

It's like a GOOD vending machine so it doesn't cost you anything if you don't get the goods. You only pay if you get a response!

SatvikBeri• 9 years ago

You don't pay if you don't get a response.

CamelCaseName4• 9 years ago

How does 21 measure the value of a response? I could send Horowitz an essay of an email and he could reply with "k", or some plagarized response. Would I still have to pay $100?

antirez• 9 years ago

Whatever you do with the $20 I still find unreasonable to make you contactable via a paywall: moreover if you have no time, you have no time even if each communication will donate $20 for a good cause. For a person of the wealth of B.H. it's simpler to just give directly money and avoid to receive unwanted communications.

netsharc2• 9 years ago

Bill Gates' book The Road Ahead had the idea of a paywall to fight spam, someone who really wants to get your attention could attach a $20 "stamp" to their mail, and if it's a really important mail, say from a long-lost family member, you'd refund them. If it's just spam, you can keep the money.

sanswork3• 9 years ago

That sounds like a great idea at first but if you think about it for a bit you realise it would just increase the digital divide dramatically.

bluetwo2• 9 years ago

I'm still waiting for someone to build an email system where only the header is sent along. The body of the message must be retrieved from the original server using a unique key included in the header. This would decrease spoofing of IPs and make black listing more accurate.

Please someone steal this idea...

danm07• 9 years ago

this is hilarious... Ben's going to get spammed with emails

btipling• 9 years ago

I wrote a lengthy question and signed up but at the payment screen it required a credit card. I would have preferred a third party service like PayPal. I am not inclined to enter my credit card information into random websites. I would have been happy to donate the $20 otherwise.

notahacker2• 9 years ago

It's not that random, it's a startup which has raised over $100m, much of it from Andreessen Horowitz.

That said, it's a Bitcoin startup so it's weird if credit card really is the only accepted payment method.

hazelnut• 9 years ago

"Proceeds will be donated to Black Girls Code" http://www.blackgirlscode.com/

1dundundun• 9 years ago

Gets publicity and $$ over to a good cause. I'm loving it.

the_watcher6• 9 years ago

It isn't listed on the page, but the meta description claims that you'll only pay if you get a response.

ddp2• 9 years ago

Who the hell is Ben Horowitz and why would I pay money to contact him?

achompas• 9 years ago

Surprised to see this q on HN of all places. He's a co-founder of arguably the most powerful VC in Silicon Valley.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Horowitz

GavinMcG• 9 years ago

What value does expressing your surprise add, here?

ddp2• 9 years ago

Okay, noted. I don't think much of VC's in general. Ours were a decidedly mixed bag that brought little to the table, in retrospect.

vageli• 9 years ago

Does anyone know what the tax implications (if any) for accepting such a large number of public donations may be?

1337biz• 9 years ago

I always wondered what I should write people like that - unless I am pitching them for a project. "So I herd on Hackernews you are a really, really cool. Wanna go for chili next week and troll around?"

patmcguire• 9 years ago

Article says $100?

yarou• 9 years ago

It's relatively easy to flood his email. Imagine how much fun an Eastern European kid can have with this. All he needs is a database of cards to cycle through.

aaawow3• 9 years ago

He increased the price

subrat_rout• 9 years ago

Now it is $100. May be due to unprecedented response.

blueyes• 9 years ago

When you click through to send the email, they jack up the price to $100. Feels scummy to me...

spott• 9 years ago

It now says $100 on the front page. I think the price has recently been changed.

CamelCaseName4• 9 years ago

Do you want to know why they did it? Send a message for $100.00 and find out!

aaawow3• 9 years ago

Here is how $20 advice from Ben looks like http://take.ms/UTHnJ

It's $100 now :-0

skrebbel• 9 years ago

Ben Horowitz invested tens of millions into this company [0]. This looks like a pivot away from all the bitcoin hardware and using Ben's relative celebrity status to give it some attention.

Half this thread is about what Ben needs the money for or whether he ought to be donating more to charity, but that's not what this is about. This is just PR for a recent pivot of one of Ben's companies.

All that said, I like the concept.

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2015/05/18/what-is-21-co-really-doing...

Almost offtopic: How do people do this? (and by "this" i mean [0]) Raise millions and millions from established VCs with entirely unproven ideas, no traction, no nothing? Every once in a while we hit an article about a company like that and meanwhile us normal founders are struggling to close a very modest seed round. Is it just a network thing?

dpweb2• 9 years ago

Guessing, but - in convincing someone in a position of power over you, it is very hard for them to reasonably deny you when you have REAL demonstrated experience.

If you don't, its the easiest and sensible thing to deny you. The founder with past experience (startup payoffs) is in an entirely different light.

sanswork3• 9 years ago

The CEO was/is(?) a partner at Andreessen Horowitz.

winslow• 9 years ago

So has anyone taken up the offer? If so do you mind sharing what you asked and what the response was?

dpweb2• 9 years ago

So this is like selling autographs?

Seriously, an idea - actually modestly FUND someone who sends one of these emails. Then do this exercise again in the future, the response will be at least 2x!

kapauldo• 9 years ago

Massive ego.

RichardHeart• 9 years ago

Response I got:

"Richard, Thanks for the note and this is BTC not paypal! Thank you so much for the donation! Best, Ben"

He got down to the P.S. I included which said something to the effect of "I'm surprised you're not accepting paypal instead of BTC"

I should have got in when the market was $20 hehe.

mdrzn• 9 years ago

It's $100 now.

Contact Ben Horowitz for $20

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